The environmental website DeSmog Blog released a video yesterday showing Bill Nye the “science guy” comparing the fossil fuel energy revolution of the last 150 years to human slavery. According to journalist Marc Morano, who interviewed Nye for the documentary film Climate Hustle, he was surprised to hear Nye compare a carbon-based energy revolution that has lifted more people out of poverty “akin to human slavery.” Morano, who is also the writer and co-producer of the documentary, also turned down a $20,000 bet that the planet would keep getting hotter. (video after the jump)

Morano was offered two bets between Bill Nye and himself. Nye regularly espouses the alarmist global warming narrative despite evidence to the contrary. Climate Hustle is a rebuttal to claims that catastrophic global warming is occurring and is the reason for any unusual weather event. “Too much rain or not enough rain, lots of snow, not enough snow, fewer hurricanes, more hurricanes, fewer tornadoes, more tornadoes, outbreaks, famine, disease, whatever the issue, climate activists point to it and blame global warming,” Morano says.

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Desmog writes that “Nye said he was willing to bet Morano that 2016 would be one of the ten hottest years on record. He also offered a bet the current decade would be the hottest on record.” The site says that Morano turned down both bets, calling them “silly” and that Morano wouldn’t take a bet when it was “obvious” the official records would show more global warming.

Not true, Morano wrote in an emailed statement about his interview with Nye for the upcoming documentary Climate Hustle. Morano had debated Nye twice before, but this time he was there “to interview him and get his thoughts on issues.” He said that during the interview, he “challenged Nye on certain assertions but generally let Nye do all the talking.”

Morano said the interview with Nye ran about one hour and 20 minutes, and he was hoping to get Nye’s reactions to film clips from Climate Hustle and for his next film ‘Climate Monarchy.’ “I was very low key and just trying to get reactions,” Morano writes. Nye also had a film crew at the interview, and subsequently published an edited video that was released at DeSmog.

DeSmog writes that within that nearly hour-and-a-half interview, Nye offered Morano two $10,000 bets. The first bet was that 2016 would be one of the ten hottest years on record (conventional weather records kept since the middle of 19th century). The second bet was that the decade of 2010-2020 would prove to be the hottest decade on record. DeSmog asked Morano why he turned those bets down with Nye.

Morano says he turned down Nye’s two bets but not for the reasons they insinuated. “Nye’s temperature bet is pointless on many levels. First off, given the geologic history of the Earth, how does one year here or there or even a decade prove anything? Second, Nye is implying that ‘record’ temperatures that are not outside the margin of error of the dataset are somehow meaningful. Even former NASA climatologist James Hansen admitted “hottest year” declarations are “not particularly important.”

Morano notes that despite “Nye’s claims of hottest year or decade compared to the past 150 years or so of recordkeeping, it is clear that the 1930s were a very warm decade before NOAA ‘adjustments’ cooled the past. But the EPA still shows the 1930s reign supreme in the US.” He told Desmog that “2015, fueled by the record or near record El Nino, was barely a tenth of a degree warmer than previous ‘hottest’ year claims.”

As reported previously, except for a few months of anomalous warming attributed to a strong, naturally occurring El Ni√±o, there has been a global warming hiatus that began after the last strong El Ni√±o in 1998. This runs contrary to DeSmog’s claim that “14 of the 16 hottest years on record have all happened since the year 2000.” The evidence presented in this latest study supports the claim there has been a “reduced rate of global surface warming.” DeSmog is still relying on jiggered data by NOAA and NASA that tries to hide the hiatus.